


matches struck unexpectedly in the dark

by xabier



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: M/M, Prank Wars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-07-20 13:46:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16138508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xabier/pseuds/xabier
Summary: “Hey now, there’s an easy way to settle this,” TJ pipes in.“What?” Sasha asks. He’s enjoying this. Sasha did that, he put that look on Nicke’s face.“We go again,” Nicke answers. “And this time we see who is better.”





	matches struck unexpectedly in the dark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Thorne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thorne/gifts).



Kuzya is doing a bad job of being stealthy, cackling like a loon as he rounds the corner and sprays his machine gun at Dima.

Dima, in turn, yelps and knees Kuzya, which only makes Kuzya laugh louder.  
  
“Fuck,” Dima curses in English. He tosses his console on the table and crossing his arms in a huff. He switches back to Russian. “I’m shit at these games, how come we never play FIFA?”  
  
“Winner picks the next game, Dima, those are the rules. You want to pick the game, maybe practice your Call of Duty,” Kuzya says, mashing his buttons.  
  
“You guys want to keep drawing attention to yourselves or what,” Sasha mutters, low in his seat, an ice-pack wrapped around his knee. There’s a card game going on behind them, but the baseline drone of the plane’s engines drown out any subdued conversation those guys are having. In the back, guys are sleeping, and even further back, the coaches are illuminated by the blue lights of computer screens as they clip together a low-lights reel of the team’s 6-2 drubbing by the Avs in Colorado.  
  
Sasha stares down at his screen and focuses on hunting down Kuzya instead of thinking about the fucking power play or Gabe fucking Landeskog.  
  
Dima and Kuzya, of course, don’t listen to him, and the two team up on Kuzya's console when Kuzya manages to pin Sasha down behind a barrier.  
  
"Get him, get him," Dima eggs on as Kuzya peppers the barrier with bullets.  
  
Sasha says nothing. Sasha is a ball of pent-up anger and frustration pushed tighter and tighter together until it can fit like a lump in his chest. Sasha is trained, programmed to wake up fresh every morning and forget yesterday’s disappointments. Sasha is a machine.  
  
He hits the buttons to through a smoke grenade and in the same motion rolls forward, shooting Kuzya twice at close range. Kuzya’s character is dead before Kuzya even realizes Sasha moved.  
  
“What the hell,” Kuzya laments. He punches Sasha, which jostles his knee, making Sasha cry out and punch back.  
  
"Alex," a voice cuts through with a sharp, precise clarity. Across the aisle, Nicke lowers his magazine slowly and pins Sasha with a look.  
  
"Sorry," Sasha mutters, shoving Kuzya one last time.  
  
"Alex," Nicke repeats, and that look is still there. "We talked about this."  
  
For a second, Sasha has no idea what he means, but then Nicke's eyes flick to Kuzya and Dima, who are pretending to be quiet little angels now, the liars, and it clicks.  
  
"Oh," Sasha grunts. "Look, is night time. Most guys sleeping, this best place to play."  
  
"Front of the plane is for captain and A's only. That's the rule."  
  
It's a dumb rule, but Sasha keeps himself from saying so. Sasha has been the captain for nearly a decade, but most of the rules in place were passed down from the days when fucking Oatsie was captain, and there's nothing Sasha can do about it.  
  
Sasha remembers his own days of waiting out on a tarmac in the depths of Minnesota winter with the other rookies so that they could board after the vets were comfortably installed. Walking past Halpern, Witt, Clark, and the other vets spread out in the front area of the plane where the leg room was larger, and there were fold-out tables for card games--and then having to fit himself into the seats at the back where his knees would bump into the seat behind him.  
  
And what is Nicke expecting? Brooksie is asleep in the back, noise-canceling headphones and eye-mask and everything. It would just be the two of them, Sasha and Nicke, spread out on either side of the plane.  
  
Sasha sighs because there's no point in arguing however many years’ worth of North American tradition and status quo. "Ok. I pay a fine for these two, then you happy? One hundred each."  
  
Nicke doesn’t reply, just looks at Sasha.  
  
“Geez. Two hundred each, fine.”  
  
Nicke pulls his magazine back up, a clear dismissal.  
  
"What's his problem," Dima mutters in Russian. They pick up their consoles and start a new lobby in-game.  
  
Sasha can think of a lot of things. The six goals against tonight, or the absolute reaming they'd gotten from Trotz after the game. Or the fact that they are 20 games into the season and barely have ten wins. Signs that history will yet again repeat itself--another season where their roster looks good but they just can't seem to pull it together.  _Have your best friend traded away for draft picks_ , Sasha wants to tell Dima,  _and see how you feel_.  
  
"He needs to loosen up," Kuzya says, glancing over at Nicke. "Maybe we can help him."  
  
“You hooligans just cost me four hundred dollars and you still haven't learned your lesson.” But Sasha cocks his head to the side and considers. “What do you have in mind?”  
  
—  
  
Kuzya’s plan is awful and involves the help of one of the flight attendants.  
  
“But it’s his birthday today,” Kuzya cajoles Apurva the flight attendant in the back of the plane, where the three of them have gathered. “Thirtieth birthday. Thirty, flirty, fun! We want it be special.”  
  
“You watch too much American television,” Sasha mutters to Kuzya in Russian under his breath.  
  
Apurva still looks utterly confused. “Ok. But like I told you, we don’t have a cake on board. Or candles. This is a plane, sir, not an Applebee’s.”  
  
Sasha can literally see Kuzya testing the word “Applebee’s” silently on his tongue, the way he does with any English word that amuses him.  
  
He cannot believe this man has a wife and child at home. Sasha sighs to himself.  
  
“What if we make the cake?” Sasha interjects, taking over for Kuzya. “You still bring to him, and we sing?”  
  
“How are you going to make—”  
  
Sasha waves a hand. “It’s fake cake. But it represent our love for him, yeah? And we sing Happy Birthday?”  
  
Apurva looks reluctant but she agrees when Sasha puts a one hundred dollar bill in her pocket. At this rate, he’ll be bankrupt by the time the flight lands.  
  
Kuzya borrows a plate from Apurva and Dima gets Sasha’s shower bag from his carry-on. Sasha balls up some napkins and carefully sprays shaving cream around the napkins until it really almost does look like a birthday cake. Apurva finds a piece of ribbon that they shape into a ‘30’ atop the cake.  
  
The three of them hurry back to their seats.  
  
“Act natural,” Sasha has to bark at Dima, who keeps biting down giggles and looks constipated.  
  
Sasha sits next to Nicke, who glances up at him with a frown.  
  
“What’s wrong? Someone sick?” Nicke asks.  
  
“Nothing wrong,” Sasha says with a placating hand on Nicke’s shoulder. He leaves his hand there, friendly, intimate. He pitches his voice low and leans close. This close, Nicke smells like the winter pine shampoo from the Av’s visitor locker room. “I’m sorry we couldn’t win tonight. For you.”  
  
“What are you talking about?”  
  
“Come on. You didn’t think we forgot about your birthday?” Sasha says, squeezing Nicke’s shoulder.  
  
Apurva starts coming down the aisle and Kuzya and Dima start singing. The singing wakes up half the team and interrupts the card game, and guys slowly start joining in song, poking their heads up over seats to watch.  
  
Apurva times it perfectly and arrives in front of Nicke just as the team sings “—dear Backy, happy birthday to you.”  
  
“Sorry there aren’t any candles to blow, they said not allowed on plane,” Sasha explains. He dips a finger in the fake frosting and licks it off with a smile.  
  
Nicke seems to be struggling for words. His cheeks are very pink. “This is—thank you, but my birthday isn’t until next week, idiots.”  
  
Sasha just smiles. “I know.”  
  
And then he pushes Nicke’s face into the shaving cream cake.  
  
It’s as satisfying as Sasha remembers.  
  
Until Nicke splutters and wrenches his face back and Sasha realized he forgot to prep a towel. “Towel!” Sasha snaps at the guys laughing and filming on their phones.  
  
Holts tosses him a seat cover and Nicke uses that to wipe his face off. One-eyed, he chases Sasha with it, and Sasha lets himself be caught and half-smeared across his cheek with shaving cream. Sasha wipes it off and flicks it at Nicke.  
  
“You—you asshole,” Nicke says half-laughing and half-spitting out shaving cream.  
  
“I owed you that one, remember? I told you I get you back. That day during media.”  
  
“That was six years ago, you psycho,” Nicke says, but he’s smiling like he can’t stop.  
  
“Yeah? Well score’s tied now.”  
  
Nicke coughs on some shaving cream. “Not tied. I won that prank war. We call up Greenie, he was the score-keeper.”  
  
Sasha guffaws. “Greenie biased, obviously. He say anything you want him to say.”  
  
“I won,” Nicke insists. “Who—Beags, you remember this.”  
  
“I remember you dancing around the locker room with itching powder in your underwear, yeah,” Beags snorts from the cards table.  
  
“Yeah, but that wasn’t even Alex, it was Sasha Semin,” Nicke replies.  
  
Sasha waves a hand. “Sema was on my team, it counted.”  
  
Nicke glares, but he doesn’t look as intimidating with shaving cream drying in clumps in his hair. “There weren’t teams. It was me versus you. And I won.”  
  
“Hey now, there’s easy way to settle this,” TJ pipes in.  
  
“What?” Sasha asks. He’s enjoying this. Sasha did that, he put that look on Nicke’s face.  
  
“We go again,” Nicke answers. “And this time we see who is better.”  
  
It's on Sasha's lips to concede defeat and let Nicke have this victory.  
  
TJ drumrolls against the back of his seat. “Team Russia versus Team Sweden. The North Americans will act as neutral party and decide the winner,” TJ says.  
  
There’s a general murmur of assent from the rest of the team on the plane.  
  
“Fuck yes,” Kuzya chimes in. Dima nods beside him.  
  
Nicke glances down at them and seems to hesitate. “And I get Burky and Djoos on my team?”  
  
“Yup,” TJ says.  
  
Nicke pauses. “Eller too. I want Lars on my team.”  
  
Sasha lifts a brow. “Then it would be 4 v 3. And Tiger not even Swedish.”  
  
“It’s fine, we take the V,” Kuzya says. He switches into Russian and yells across the plane at Vrana: “Hey rookie, you’re with us now! Welcome to Team Russia.”  
  
V pokes his head out in confusion and replies something in Czech. Kuzya nods.  
  
“Well,” Sasha says. He was going to say something about being too old and not having the energy for this kind of thing, and that he and Nicke should bow out and let the rookies handle this, but then he looks at Nicke and knows he can’t say no.  
  
Everyone’s eyes are on him. ”Sure. What we play for? And don’t say money,” he says quickly, thinking of his rapidly lightening wallet.  
  
“Winning team gets front of plane privileges rest of the season,” Nicke says, chin out, like a dare.  
  
Sasha can deal with that, he supposes.  
  
“Deal.” Sasha shakes, and that’s it.  
  
—  
  
There are rules and scoring criteria and the team even sets up a new group chat for reporting proof of pranks and recording scores.  
  
“Five points per person pranked. You can get bonus points for an inventive or creative prank,” TJ outlines. “Holts and I will be the judges for how many points each prank is worth, and Grubi is in charge of tallying the points. The prank must be witnessed by either Holts or I, or recorded and posted to the group chat, in order to count for points. Any questions?”  
  
Burky raises his hand, but Nicke shoves it down and exchanges an eye roll with Eller.  
  
Team Sweden takes first blood later that day when they steal Team Russia’s practice sticks and sneak coins into the shaft of the sticks.  
  
“This was Backy’s idea, 100%,” Sasha says to V as Sasha rips tape off his stick at the bench, unable to take the rattling any longer. “Only Backy thinks this is funny.”  
  
Sasha wedges his nail into the groove between the end of the stick and the plastic cap and pushes until the cap pops free. He shakes the stick upside down and four pennies spill out onto the floor by the bench.  
  
"What, I'm not even worth a nickel?" Sasha yells across the rink at Nicke, who hides his face behind his glove before turning back to the face-offs drill he's watching.  
  
Sasha shakes his head. V hands him a roll of tape.  
  
"What kind of stuff did Nick do before, in your last prank war?" V asks.  
  
Sasha considers this as he re-tapes his stick. The last time he and Nicke did this, it was after two or three seasons playing together. They were very young. Nicke’s hair was unspeakably awful. He’s figured it out better now—the gel made his curls stringy like noodles, but the wax he uses now is gentler and more natural. And he’s stopped bleaching it, letting the color settle into a dark gold.  
  
Nicke had stuck to a lot of the classics. Clear tape over the skate blades, buckets of water propped up against doors, stealing Sasha’s clothes and sticking them in the freezer.  
  
“His best prank,” Sasha says, “he stuck a Mentos in the top part of my water bottle, so it didn’t touch the Coke.”  
  
A lot of guys drink Gatorade or other sports drinks on the bench, but Sasha likes the zip that Coke gives him. The trainers had looked at him like he had two heads the first time he requested it, but what can they say to him now?  
  
“Oh, so when you drink it—“ V mimes an explosion with his hands. “That’s pretty funny.”  
  
Sasha bangs his newly-retaped stick on the ground a few times for good measure. "He’s sneaky. Don’t forget it.”  
  
—  
  
Only later, it occurs to Sasha that these young players on the team now, they have no idea how sneaky Nicke can be. They weren’t around for those years, they never knew the pimply-faced Nicke who would sneak McDonalds after a game, or the Nicke who would get drunk in Mike Green’s apartment and hide ketchup packets everywhere.  
  
The new guys and call-ups, they don’t even call him Nicky or Backy anymore, they call him _Nick_. Who is _Nick_ , Sasha wonders.  
  
So it’s no wonder that Nicke manages to trap Dima in a bathroom stall after their game against Calgary by slipping pennies in the door jamb. He scores five points.  
  
“I’m not angry, I’m disappointed,” Sasha tells Team Russia after he has freed a slightly panicky Dima from the bathroom. This was a phrase uttered often in the McPhee household when Sasha lived there and Sasha never thought he’d be the one to utter it one day.  
  
Kuzya grumbles in Russian. “Easy for you to say, how come you aren’t pranking?”  
  
“I told you, this is a young man’s game. I’m an old man now—”  
  
“Yes, you’re ancient, we know,” Kuzya interrupts. “You could at least help us.”  
  
Sasha puts his hand on his hip. He switches to English for Vrana’s benefit. “Use brain. What our strengths? They have two rookies.”  
  
“So?” Kuzya asks.  
  
“So Burky and Djoos picking up pucks for fifteen minutes after every practice. You two—” Sasha jabs a finger at Kuzya and Dima, “are not. Use time wisely.”  
  
Kuzya gets a dangerous light in his eyes, which means Sasha got his point across.  
  
The next practice, Burky and Djoos are putting their street clothes back on when Burky suddenly puts his whole foot through his sock.  
  
“What?” Burky says, looking bewildered at the cut ends.  
  
To his left, Djoos is halfway in his shirt, his arm stuck in the sleeve that has been sewn shut, his brows drawn together in confusion.  
  
“You hate to see it happen,” Carlson says to Bowey, shaking his head.  
  
“Classics, I like it,” Holts says. “What do you say, Teej, ten points?”  
  
Nicke turns to Sasha and makes a disparaging noise. “Seriously?”  
  
“Give some time, my boys just warming up,” Sasha says.  
  
Nicke gives him a shove with one shoulder, playful but he still puts his full weight into it, bumping Sasha solidly in the chest.  
  
Over the course of the next two weeks, Kuzya, Dima, and V orchestrate filling Djoos and Burakovsky’s street shoes with honey, supergluing their shower shoes to the floor, and they manage to trap Burakovsky alone in a bathroom stall and pour honey and baby powder all over him from above.  
  
At some point, Nicke must realize Team Russia’s strategy and he starts guarding the rookie’s possessions, sending Eller out to watch over the rookies while they’re out on the ice.  
  
Typical of him, Sasha reflects, to be defensively-minded even during a prank war.  
  
All this means is that they stall out to an impasse in mid-December. Kuzya manages to lock the entire team in the showers, Sasha included, while outside Kuzya, Dima, and V space Team Sweden’s bags—dumping out all their gear bags, flipping them inside out and repacking them, with the zipper on the inside.  
  
“You’re only getting five points for this.” TJ says while they’re all stuck in the shower.  
  
After the first ten minutes of realizing they were trapped, most of the team got tired of standing around naked and have sat down on the tile, Sasha included.  
  
Sasha bats TJ’s pruny hand out of his face. “That’s not rules. Five per person, so twenty points.”  
  
“Okay, twenty points, but we’re fining you fifteen points for lack of creativity. It doesn’t take much effort to lock guys in a shower,” Holts says.  
  
Sasha doesn’t know what he’s complaining about, all this steam is great for him, purifying him of toxins. He slaps the tile, which echoes round the showers and gets everyone’s attention.  
  
“Come on, this like _banya_ , like sauna.” He scans the room for a Russian, then remembers they’re all outside. His eyes light on Nicke. “Backy, I took you to _banya_ in Moscow, during lockout. Tell them.”  
  
The steam that fills the room is thick and hot, so Sasha has no way of telling from across the shower if Nicke is blushing or just overheating. “This is nothing like Moscow.”  
  
Sasha breaks into a smile. “What, we naked, sweaty, getting rid of the bad stuff.”  
  
Nicke glances up at the ceiling like he thinks God will save him. “You made me wear a funny hat. And then you _beat_ me with a _tree branch_.”  
  
Sasha cackles in delight. The rest of the team is loving it too. Carlson is dying next to Sasha.  
  
“Babe, tell me you have pictures,” Carlson says, out of breath.  
  
“No, no pictures in _banya_ ,” Sasha says. He cocks an eyebrow at Nicke and shares a quieter, private smile.  
  
Nicke pretends not to see.  
  
It reminds Sasha a little of the look Nicke had worn after Sasha had lashed his back with the birch branch in Moscow, his eyes suddenly sliding off Sasha like he was something slippery to look at.  
  
Sasha had noticed Nicke had chubbed up a little in the banya, but it is an unspoken rule of the banya to ignore such things. So he just handed the birch branch to Nicke and instructed him on how to lash Sasha’s back too.  
  
“You can go harder, I can take it,” Sasha had said, after Nicke had delivered a few soft swishes with the branch.  
  
Nicke had put the branch down entirely and muttered that the steam was too hot, he was getting lightheaded, and so he left.  
  
Sasha hasn’t thought about that memory in a long time. He turns it over in his mind now, chewing on his lower lip in thought. Those months together in Moscow had been special, but the months afterwards had been hurried and pressed together in Sasha’s mind. The lockout had broken soon after and then it was a mad rush into playoffs where they’d tumbled out in the first round against the Rangers, in 7. The season after that, they missed the playoffs entirely and Sasha purposely does not think about that year at all.  
  
Sasha realizes he is still looking at Nicke and half-laughs to himself, tilting his head back against the cool tile.  
  
Between the shower disaster and the Team Sweden’s defensive positioning around their rookies, Team Russia soon falls behind in scoring.  
  
“Are you going to do something?” Kuzya asks Sasha when they leave practice and find the interior of Kuzy’s car decked out with rainbow glitter, courtesy of Eller.  
  
“Yeah, I’m going to keep a closer eye on my keys, that’s what,” Sasha says, peering through the window Kuzya’s car. If anyone lays a finger on Sasha’s Mercedes, he’ll shoot a one-timer at them.  
  
Kuzya makes a frustrated noise and Sasha wants to tell him to direct those frustrations at the problem, not at him.  
  
“You know, you really do remind me of Backy sometimes,” Sasha says. Kuzya doesn’t look like he understands, but Sasha just shrugs.  
  
North American media used to call Sanya Semin, ah, what was the word, aloof.  
  
Nicke used to accuse Sasha of the same, even if he never used that word.  
  
“Fucking—don’t slow down at the line when I’m passing to you,” Nicke had snapped at him once when they’d been skating back to the bench for a line change.  
  
Sasha hadn’t even acknowledged him, just slammed the bench door closed and chewed on his mouth guard.  
  
“Are you even—look at me!” Nicke shouted, spit flying.  
  
Sasha glared at him then, and Nicke stared for a moment before shoving his mouth guard back in and settling into a black mood the rest of the game.  
  
How was Sasha to explain to Nicke in that moment, or ever, that of course he cared. Sasha cared with every drop of his blood, and he’d been insulted that Nicke didn’t recognize that.  
  
Sasha just doesn’t see the point in being so agitated over something that either will happen or won’t happen. Because whatever happens, they will find a way to live with it.  
  
Sasha never tried to explain Russian _avos_ to Nicke. He just let that silence sit between them, and as the years grew so did that silence, bit by bit.  
  
He can see it in Kuzya’s expression now, a mirror of the look Nicke used to have.  
  
Something about that gives him pause and he finds himself patting Kuzya on the shoulder.  
  
Sasha sighs. “Ok, fine, I’ll help you clean out your car. Come on, it’s not so bad.”  
  
—

  
Sasha resolves to help out more with the prank war after Christmas break, but life has a strange way of interrupting one’s plans.  
  
Sasha checks his phone at team breakfast in the hotel in Arizona and sees a photo of a dick on the preview screen. He blinks and checks that no one is looking, then opens the message to look at the dick pic more closely. It's an objectively nice-looking dick, hard against a pale, smooth stomach and maybe a little skinny, but the curve of it looks delicious—  
  
Across the table, V chokes and spits orange juice all over his breakfast. "You?"  
  
Sasha slams his phone face-down onto the table, but no one is even paying attention to him.  
  
V has his phone out too, and his eyes are wide to the whites. He keeps opening and closing his mouth as if to say something, but no sounds come out. His face is as red as a beefsteak tomato.  
  
"Huh?" Sasha looks around, sees Burky cackling. "What is it?"  
  
"The groupchat," Burky says, waving his phone, and Sasha sees the same dick on Burky's screen too.  
  
Sasha opens up WhatsApp and realizes that the dick pic was posted to the pranks chat along with a screenshot. And—  
  
"Did Juicer fucking catfish V for nudes over Insta DMs? Way to go, Juicer." Wilson bumps fists with Djoos, who looks unruffled as he sips his hotel coffee.  
  
"Alex, you need to have a talk with your boy about the dangers of social media," Brooks says with a grimace.  
  
"Yeah, sure, that’s my job description." Sasha mutters. He feels gross now, like an lecherous old man. Sasha squints at the screenshot that came with the dick pic. "Is that--did you--"  
  
"Push my chest together to look like a girl's tits, yeah. And he fell for it," Djoos says from the other table. He sips his coffee, pinkie extended delicately. Nicke fucking grins and pats Djoos on the head like a proud papa.  
  
Sasha can only shake his head in bewilderment.  
  
"Thirty points to Team Sweden," Osh proclaims to the room at-large. "Bonus points for creativity."  
  
—  
  
Sasha does end up having a talk with V about sending photos of your junk to strangers over the internet. But he also goes around the room and makes sure that everyone on the team deletes the photo from their phones before leaving breakfast, because he's a nice captain.  
  
He calls a Team Russia meeting after that, because this merits a greater retaliation than just cutting some skate laces.  
  
"Ideas, go," Sasha barks in English for V's benefit.  
  
"We draw penis on top of their helmets?” Kuzya suggests, miming the action of putting on a helmet. "No one ever look at top."  
  
Sasha nods. "Next practice. You and V work together.”  
  
"Burky hate snakes. We can buy snakes and hide in locker," Dima says.  
  
Sasha makes a face. "I don't like snakes either. How about fake robot snake that move, like with remote-control."  
  
Dima nods and opens Amazon on his phone.  
  
"V, what color undershirt does Juicer wear?"  
  
"Um, red?"  
  
Sasha hands V a red paint marker. "Get his undershirt and draw with this on the inside of the shirt. When he sweats, it will stain. Draw a penis on his armpit or something."  
  
V nods vigorously.  
  
Sasha looks down at their expectant faces, his little army of pranksters. "Well, what you waiting for? Let's go."  
  
—  
  
They score sixty points on the three pranks. Sasha has never been so proud as when Djoos takes off his shirt and a red outline of a pair of boobs shows up on his chest.  
  
Nicke’s lips press and twitch like he’s holding in laughter. He meets Sasha’s eyes and, yeah, it’s on.  
  
—  
  
In January, Team Sweden figure out how to short-circuit Sasha’s front gate, leaving him trapped in his yard and fifteen minutes late for a team meeting.  
  
“Joke is on you if Trotz scratch me,” Sasha says, forking over a wad of cash to Wilson for the fine.  
  
Nicke is sitting in Sasha’s stall, of course he is. “I told Trotz you’d be late. He pushed the team meeting back thirty minutes.”  
  
Sasha snatches his cash back out of Wilson's hands. “I need this back to pay speeding ticket then.”  
  
Nicke smirks and slowly gets up, like he has all the time in the world. Behind him, Burakovsky snickers and Sasha spends the rest of the practice paranoid about his stall and his gear.  
  
The next day, Sasha gets to practice an hour early and unscrews the head of the shower that Nicke usually uses at Kettler. He sticks a bouillon cube in the head before screwing it back on.

 

 

“Something smell like beef stew to you?” He asks V innocently in the showers after practice.

V looks confused for a second, and then his head whips around, searching out the smell. 

“What the fuck,” Nicke yells, spitting out hot, beef-flavored shower water on the floor. 

Sasha cackles. Nicke stalks across the room and tries to stand under Sasha’s clean spray of water, but Sasha keeps shoving him away, the two of them grappling and slapping each other.

“Gross, you smell like cat food,” Sasha taunts.

Nicke doesn’t reply, just makes wordless sounds of rage.

“Really great example you two are leading for the rookies,” Beagle remarks dryly, and Sasha looks over at V, Bowey, and Djoos who are staring wide-eyed at their captain and alternate grappling naked in the shower.

Sasha grins and lets Nicke use his shower.

“Tally it up, what’s score now?” Sasha yells over at Osh and Holts.

“Team Sweden, 105. Team Russia, 110.”

“You hear that, Backy? Suck it.” Sasha sticks out his tongue and leaves to towel off.

But Nicke and Team Sweden pull back ahead with twenty-five points when they sneak icy-hot into the fingers of Team Russia’s gloves a few days later.

The extra five points is for the icy-hot that they manage to sneak onto Sasha’s jock. Sasha doesn’t notice it at first, but ten minutes into practice it soaks through his boxer briefs and starts tingling his junk.

“Holy mother _fucker_ ,” Sasha keens, dropping to his hands and knees on the ice as his most sensitive parts go cold, then suddenly burning hot.

Nicke glides by with his head cocked. “What’s wrong, babe?”

“Gonna fucking murder you,” Sasha grits through his teeth, clutching his groin. He moans and tries not to pass out.

Nicke laughs. “Come on, there’s olive oil in the locker room.” He motions for Kuzya and Dima to help pick Sasha up and bring him to the bench.

“I’m glad he didn’t get us with that,” Dima says, then looks apologetic at Sasha. “I mean, uh, that looks like it hurts.”

Kuzya just makes a clucking noise with his tongue.

Nicke returns with a towel soaked in olive oil.

“Come on, pants off,” Nicke says, motioning with the towel.

"You're a bastard," Sasha says, pulling at his laces.

Kuzya steps between them. 

“We got this,” Kuzya says. His eyes are narrowed on Nicke as he takes the oil-soaked towel from him.

Nicke’s cheeks redden slightly. He glances at Kuzya and Dima and shrugs, skating back to practice.

—

When they started this, no one had an end date in mind. Sasha honestly thought this prank war would dwindle down after a month or two, the way these things always seem to do. But here they are, in February, planning out pranks in the back of the shuttle to their hotel in Sunrise.

They play the Panthers on the road, a quick weekday trip to Florida before a long break.

"The equipment guys have industrial rolls of plastic wrap," Sasha says to Kuzya, Dima, and V, who are all sitting in the back of the shuttle with him. They are speaking in Russian and therefore can openly plan their pranks without having to whisper or look suspicious. The Swedes cannot do the same, as V understands a surprising amount of Swedish.

"We steal a roll, then sneak into the old Swede's hotel room in the middle of the night and wrap him to the bed," Sasha finishes.

"This sounds complicated," Dima says. "Why can't we just rub Vaseline on someone's stick during practice?"

"Or we could put Burky's gloves in jello, like in the Office," Kuzya suggests.

Sasha practically see Nicke's ears perk at the sound of Burky's name and he turns in his seat to look at the assembled Russians and Czech with narrowed eyes.

Sasha flicks Kuzya in the ear. "You do watch too much American television. And come on, we're doing my idea."

Sasha manages to bribe a copy of Nicke’s room key off the hotel manager, but the Caps equipment guys look at him strangely when he asks for a roll of their plastic wrap and they refuse him.

It's fine, because Sasha has a back-up plan.

He waits til Nicke and the rest of the team have gone to dinner, then he texts Kuzya, Dima, and V to meet him.

"This isn't dinner," Dima says when Sasha opens the door to the hotel room and hands them each a screwdriver.

"Yes, yes, come along. We don't have much time before they get back," Sasha says, waving them into the room.

Kuzya catches on first when he sees the nightstand and bedside lamp resting on top of the sink in the bathroom. "Whose room is this?"

"Nicke's, of course. Now come on, we have to take apart all of this furniture and more it into the bathroom. V, you take that side."

Kuzya and Dima exchange a look. Dima folds his arms.

"Sasha, this will take us hours. We're in Florida, come on, let's go get dinner next to the beach or something."

Sasha snorts, returning to where he was in the middle of unscrewing part of the headboard from the bed. "Nonsense, there are four of us. If we work together, this will barely take an hour.

Dima stands firm. "No.

"It's funny that you think you have a choice," Sasha says mildly.

"Look, Sasha," Dima begins, then glances at V. "How much Russian can he understand?"

Kuzy shrugs. "Hardly any. I just like to fuck with him."

"Sasha," Dima starts again. "Kuzya and I, we're happy to support you. But at some point you must admit to yourself what is happening."

Sasha finishes unscrewing his end of the headboard and hands one of the bed's struts to Dima, who takes it but doesn't move.

"Tell me this, why are we doing this to Backstrom's room? Why not Burakovsky's or Eller's?" Dima asks.

Sasha blows out an exasperated breath. "Really, if you just shut up and got on with it, we could be finished with this in an hour and then we could go out to eat."

Kuzya makes a tch sound with his tongue against his teeth. "This is what we're talking about, Sasha. This kind of denial can't go on."

"Denial—what in the hell are you talking about. Speak clearly, you make no sense," Sasha says, looking at the two of them.

Kuzya puts down his screwdriver. "Are you doing all this to win a stupid prank war or are you doing this because it lets you flirt with Backy?"

"Jesus Christ," Sasha swears in English, shooting a quick look at V, who to his credit is keeping his head down and staring at his phone in silence. "You two are delusional and need to see a doctor."

"You know we're right," Dima says. He looks wounded, though Sasha can't possibly think of a reason why he should be. "Fine, deny it to us. But don't deny it to yourself."

With a loaded look, he takes the strut in his hand and moves it into the bathroom.

They work in silence after that, which Sasha feels badly about, but even Dima must admit that they finish quicker without all that chatter.

Sasha stands in the middle of the room, admiring their handiwork. "Great job, babes. Come on, I'm buying dinner tonight."

Dima grumbles but seems otherwise to have moved on from whatever mood he was in before. "Fine, but I want steak, none of that Chinese food you're always dragging us to."

—

They score thirty points on the prank, which Team Sweden protests strenuously.

"Yeah, but like," TJ gestures at Nicke's empty hotel room. "They disassembled every stick of furniture, moved it to the bathroom, and re-assembled everything. This required _power tools_."

There’s a constant stream of guys in and out of the hotel room, wanting to see it for themselves. The team had mostly split into smaller groups for dinner, but now that everyone's back, they're hanging out in the hallway, joking around and talking instead of going back to their hotel rooms alone.

"This reminds me of one time in Pittsburgh—" Orpik starts telling the rookies and the young guys gathered around him.

Sasha doesn't listen, he just grins in the face of Nicke's outrage.

—

Later that night, there’s a knock on the door to Sasha’s hotel room and Sasha opens it without looking.

It’s Nicke, shirtless, a toiletries bag tucked under one arm.

"What?" Sasha asks, glancing out in the hallway just in case.

Nicke shoulders past him. "Half my bed is in the shower and it's your fault. So I'm sleeping here tonight."

Sasha's tongue feels slow and he doesn't really reply. It's a little too close to what Dima and Kuzya were hinting at earlier in the day.

He closes the door behind Nicke and that's a mistake, suddenly the room feels smaller and more private.

Nicke is in his bathroom, brushing his teeth with Sasha's toothpaste. Sasha watches from the doorway as he hangs his toothbrush next to Sasha's when he's done.

"I have plans for you," Nicke says, wiping his mouth on a towel. He meets Sasha's eyes in the mirror and Sasha's mind stutters.

"I don't—what kind of plans," Sasha asks when his voice comes back to him.

"Something that’s gonna score 30 points,” Nicke says. He pushes Sasha out of the way and climbs onto Sasha's bed. “So, sleep well.”

What was it that Dima had said? Why not Burakovsky or Eller? Why had Nicke come to Sasha's room and not one of their's? Why hadn't he gone down to the front desk and asked for a new room?

"You're bluffing," Sasha says. He's still not entirely sure, he feels like he's on unsteady ground.

"You'll never know." Nicke looks up at him from the bed. "That was a good prank tonight."

"I know. You jealous you didn't think of it."

Nicke shifts onto his side. "This prank war has been good, I think. It's a long season, it kept guys loose."

Sasha sits down on the bed next to him. "Tonight, with everyone in the hallway, it reminded me of being back in the dorms at Dynamo. Everyone close, hanging out. The young guys never get to see us like that anymore, you know. We are old men to them."

Nicke hums, then yawns. "Very old men. You going to bed soon?"

Sasha has no idea if he'll be able to sleep a wink. "Sure. I'll get the light."

—

Later, staring up at the ceiling, he remembers this is not even the first time they've fallen asleep together. There was once, at Mike Green's apartment, when they'd stayed up all night playing FIFA with no games or practices the next day. Sasha had fallen asleep on Greenie's couch, Nicke half on top of him. He snored back then, too.

—

Whatever that night is, Sasha carries it with him in the back of his mind the next few days. They go back home and beat Buffalo 5-1, then they go straight back on the road again to Columbus.

Sasha kicks off his shoes by the door of his hotel room in Columbus, stripping off his shirt out of habit. He scratches at his chest, thinking about what it was like waking up next to Nicke that morning after. Nicke hadn't said anything to him, hadn't acknowledged the weirdness of him barging into Sasha's room after curfew and demanding to sleep in Sasha's bed.

Sasha got up to take a shower and by the time he was back, Nicke was gone, back to normal again at team breakfast.

It bothers Sasha because it must have meant something, Sasha just can't understand what. Sasha had spent all night tensed and waiting for _something_ to happen, but nothing did. Nicke isn't capricious like that. His every move is deliberate. He chooses his words slowly, carefully. Sometimes, when they're on the power play together, and every fiber of Sasha is urging Nicke shoot, to pass to him, to do something, Nicke will take an extra half-second to just brush the snow off the top of the puck with the toe of his stick.

So it has to mean something.

Sasha is lost in thought, and that’s what he’ll blame later for not noticing the bathroom door behind him.

Sasha spots a shadow in the mirror out of the corner of his eye, and when he turns to look, there is a man in a clown mask standing silently behind him.

"Holy fuck," Sasha shouts, startling so badly that he falls backwards onto his ass as he tries to turn and face the clown. He scrambles backwards, banging into a desk chair.

The clown laughs and that's when Sasha sees the phone.

"Oh Jesus Christ," Sasha swears, making the sign of the cross and kissing his necklace. "You scare shit out of me, you idiot."

Nicke pulls off the terrifying clown mask. "I don't know, I think you're the one that looks pretty dumb on this video."

Sasha gets up onto his feet and shoves him. "You're an asshole. How long have you been waiting in here to scare me?"

"Like an hour. Why weren't you back from lunch the same time as the others?"

"I took walk to clear my head." Little good that did him. Nicke is back in his room and Sasha is just as confused as he was this morning.

"The guys are gonna piss themselves laughing when they see this video," Nicke snorts.

 Sasha grabs Nicke by the soft fabric of his hoodie and pulls him in within arm's reach. “So you haven’t sent the video yet.”

Nicke’s eyes narrow and Sasha moves fast, slapping the phone out of his hand, which lands safely on the bed.

Nicke dives for it and Sasha leaps on top of him. He gets his hands around Nicke’s wrists, pins his weight over Nicke’s into the bed.

Nicke lets out a winded ' _helvete'_ ' and saves the rest of his breath for wriggling free of Sasha.

“Yeah right,” Sasha mutters, hooking his leg around Nicke to keep him still. He lets go of one wrist to grab the phone and Nicke surges up suddenly, trying to buck Sasha off his back.

Nicke must be used to wrestling with Jojo, Burky, and Djoos, if this is what usually works for him. But Sasha has at least thirty pounds on Nicke’s usual opponents.

Sasha brings his weight back down, hard, trapping Nicke back against the bed, though now Nicke is on his back instead of his belly.

The phone skids away in the struggle. Sasha takes his eyes away from it for a second and loses track of it somewhere in the sheets.

“That’s cute,” Sasha says as Nicke tries to angle himself, to get an arm between their bodies. They’re similarly sized, him and Nicke, and it works to Sasha’s advantage because it means he can fit to Nicke's body pretty well, not allow any free space between them.

Sasha has him completely pancaked, Nicke’s shoulders flat against the bed.

“I bet you hate this. You used to getting what you want, right?” Sasha keeps his tone conversational, like the effort of keeping Nicke pressed to the bed isn’t making him sweat.

Nicke’s hair is tangled in front of his eyes, but when Sasha looks at him, he’s not actually angry-looking. If anything, his eyes are wide and shocky, his irises a wide pool of black ringed with a thin pale green.

Sasha feels it against his leg.

“Oh. You don’t hate this. You _like_ it.”

He shifts around a little to get more of his thigh over Nicke’s lower half and Nicke makes a noise that sounds like it was pulled involuntarily from somewhere deep inside him.

“Shut up,” Nicke mutters. His face is very pink.

“That doesn’t sound like ‘stop,’” Sasha says. He rubs his thigh against the erection tenting Nicke’s shorts.

He could still be reading this wrong. Involuntary boners happen all the time. Brains respond to stimuli, it doesn’t always mean sexual interest.

But Nicke doesn’t say ‘stop’ and he doesn’t try to push Sasha away.

For a long minute, the loudest sounds in the room are Nicke’s panting breaths and the sound of cloth shifting as Sasha rubs his thigh over Nicke in wide circles.

Nicke grabs Sasha’s arm suddenly and digs his nails in. Sasha stills.

“If this is,” Nicke seems to have a hard time finding his tongue. “Some kind of…prank.”

Sasha’s mouth falls open. “You think I would—”

“No, _no_ not. Just.” Nicke stares up at him a little desperately. “I need to hear you say it.”

Sasha is at a loss. He lets up a bit, gives Nicke space to move away if he wants to. Nicke doesn’t move.

“I thought—” Sasha starts and stops. “I guess I thought you can read me better. I thought it’s obvious.”

Nicke blinks. “I’m—I can’t read your mind.”

“Sometimes feels like it. After so many years.” Sasha tries to joke. “How else you find me on the ice?”

"Maybe I did read you," Nicke says slowly. "A voice in my head kept telling me. But then the other voices told me to stop imagining things."

“Your head sounds noisy,” Sasha says lightly.

Nicke just looks at him. "So tell me what's real."

Sasha feels helpless, feels speechless. All this time, he thought he was an open book to Nicke. And now, when forced to say the words, he can't voice them.

So Sasha does the only thing he can think of and kisses Nicke.

Nicke tastes of tobacco and salt. Sasha runs his teeth over Nicke's lower lip and feels him shudder.

"Is that real?" Sasha asks.

Nicke closes his eyes and nods.

Sasha rearranges them so Sasha's laying along the same line as Nicke, every inch from head to toe touching. He grinds his own hardening erection against Nicke's, breath hitching when he gets the angle right and he can feel them bump against each other, the heat penetrating through two layers of fabric. "I want this, too."

"You can shut up now," Nicke says before kissing him again.

And that's just fine with Sasha. He thinks he has an idea of what Nicke likes. He grabs Nicke's wrists and pins them over his head, resting his entire weight on top of Nicke. It means he doesn't have a whole lot of leverage for anything else, but he can grind slow circles down on Nicke and watch his face go pinker and pinker with exertion.

They're still wearing all their clothes, so it's a torturous blend of not enough friction and too much of the wrong kind of friction. Nicke seems to like it though, making small, desperate noises and pushing his hips up against Sasha's to try to make him go faster. Sasha finally relents and lets Nicke drive the pace he wants. He buries his face in Nicke's warm neck, alternating biting marks and licking at them. When Nicke comes, Sasha lets go of his wrists and pulls back enough to watch him, to devour the sight.

Nicke looks deliciously fucked-out. His hair is a mess. His wrists are still up where Sasha left them, slightly red and turned upward in submission. His breath comes panting past wet, swollen lips.

Sasha sits back on his heels pulls down Nicke's sweatpants around his thick thighs. Nicke hisses, oversensitive, when Sasha peels down his underwear too. Sasha drags his hand through Nicke's come and Nicke shudders, watching Sasha from between lowered lashes. Sasha pushes down his own pants just enough, and strokes himself with the slippery mess. The first slick slide over the head nearly drags Sasha under, but he really starts trembling when Nicke's hand joins his. After that, its only a matter of seconds before Sasha is adding to the mess on Nicke's stomach and groin with a groan.

Sasha face-plants next to Nicke. Nicke only gives him twenty, thirty seconds max of afterglow before pokes Sasha in the side.

"Are you gonna help me clean up or what," Nicke asks, wiping his own hand on Sasha's hip.

Sasha groans again, peeking one eye at Nicke. "Hey, I found your phone."

Sasha feels around under his chest with his relatively clean hand, and offers it up to Nicke.

Nicke takes it. "You're going to let me post the video?"

"I'm feeling generous," Sasha says, twirling a curl of Nicke's hair around his finger.

—

They decide to end the prank war with the end of the regular season.  Team Sweden wins, 170 points to Team Russia's 150.

Nicke scored 20 points on the video of him scaring Sasha in the clown mask.

—

"Hey, Team Sweden only in the front of the plane," Burky protests in early June, blocking Sasha in the aisle with one outstretched foot.

"I think you make one-time exception for this," Sasha leers, holding Lord Stanley's Cup in his arms.

"Let him through," Nicke orders from his seat, a huge smile on his face.

None of them can stop smiling. Sasha hasn't stopped smiling since last night--all through the celebrations on the ice, the club after, and finally in Nicke's room at the end of the night. Sasha sets the Cup down gently on one of the fold-out tables and sits next to Nicke. They both smell a bit like beer, still.

"Look what I brought you," Sasha says, only half-joking. His hand slides automatically around Nicke's shoulders.

Nicke shakes his head at Sasha and touches the Cup with reverence, his fingertips brushing the silver where now their names will rest forever in history, side-by-side. "I still can't believe."

Sasha looks only at Nicke. "Me neither."


End file.
